Thankful for the wise minds of the past

In this unusual, spirited and historic presidential election cycle, it is perhaps no surprise that the Electoral College, that venerable yet almost invisible institution which actually, under the Constitution, selects our Presidents, would come under much closer scrutiny this year. As a Chester Countian I was an Elector in the last GOP Electoral College prior to 2016, in 1988, and Jim McErlane and Bunny Welsh were Electors on Dec. 19 of this year. The ritual is virtually identical every four years, when I imagine some clerk in the Secretary of State’s office pulls out a file that says, “Electoral College” and they change the names but basically follow the historic script. And I know Jim and Bunny share in that same sense of seriousness I experienced, that pervades the House Chamber when the College meets.

Most voters assume that once their votes are cast, that the results will be tabulated and we will have a new President. But the machinery is a bit more cumbersome than that. The founding fathers did not want a popular election, they wanted a handful of outstanding, well informed citizens to form the Electoral College from each state. They presumed these Electors would take into account the wishes of the citizenry but they also wanted them to utilize their own judgment. The popular vote wasn’t even counted until 1824. Even as the nation democratized and popular election was adopted in the states, the Constitutional form of the Electoral College has been maintained.

Although there have been times in history when it has come to the fore, in recent history the existence of the Electoral College has generally been viewed as a vestige. Now and then a “faithless elector,” one who does not vote the way the voters in their state voted, has emerged but they are footnotes to history. This year actually saw a virtual ( although not really that many out of 538 votes) spate of faithless electors, five who voted against their own Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton and instead chose Bernie Sanders or Colin Powell. And two Republican Electors who did not vote for the voters’ choice in their state Donald Trump, who voted one each for John Kasich and Ron Paul.

What is it like to be an Elector? In 1988, the year that George H.W. Bush was elected, I was State Chairman of the Republican Party in Pennsylvania, and one of the list of Republican Electors which the party submits to the Secretary of State before the General Election, and the Democrats do likewise. The parties submitted twenty names for the 2016 election because that is determined by the number of members of Congress (both House of Representatives and Senate) of the state. (That number is determined by the state’s proportion of the population of the nation, as determined by the decennial census.) The list of electors is composed of party leaders from throughout the state, those who are the core of the “party faithful.” So when uninformed people somehow expect such persons to behave in a manner that goes against all their experience, instincts and loyalty, they are desperately trying to borrow a part of past history that goes against the current democratic function of the Electoral College. When you vote for President you are actually voting for the Electors favorable to that candidate but most voters are not thinking in those terms.

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First let’s dispense with the popular vote concept which many people also harbor. Although normally in a presidential election the winner in the Electoral College is also the winner of the most votes, that is not always the case. There have been five occasions where the popular vote-getter has lost in the Electoral College. And for those who favor the popular vote-getter being the winner, that is not an unusual viewpoint, and it has been argued on many occasions but without change in the current constitutional structure. To change it, the amendment process, which is based on state voting, makes it hard to imagine that the many smaller states who gain from both Senate representation and the Electoral College, would vote to eliminate themselves from national influence!

When I went into the Pennsylvania House of Representatives Chamber in December, 1988, it was with a strong sense of ceremony and acting in a capacity that is shared by very few. It is a huge Chamber in which normally 203 Members gather, but in that year there were only the Electors, the Secretary of State and a few staff members and we gathered at the front of the Chamber. There was of course no suspense, we knew how we were going to vote, but nonetheless that sense of you casting the actual vote that will elect the next President comes with a strong sense of responsibility, and a feeling you are part of history.

A wooden box that has been used historically in the Pennsylvania Electoral meetings is passed around and each Elector writes the name of the presidential candidate on a slip of paper and they are counted and the results tabulated and announced, to be sent to Congress where the results of all the states will be gathered. It is somewhat amusing that the person responsible for getting the votes to Washington does it today “by registered mail.” Not a horseback rider as might seem more fittingly anachronistic!

My closing story makes a strong point about the individual Elector’s power to choose. When in our 1988 Electoral College the ballots were removed from the wooden box and counted by the tellers, one of the tellers, my State Committee Executive Director Karen Martynick, came over to me quickly and said, “Earl what shall we do, (name omitted!) thoughtlessly wrote her own name rather than George H. W. Bush?” I quickly decided that Elector should be given the opportunity to submit another ballot rather than have her become an undesired footnote to history! In Pennsylvania there is no legal requirement that the Electors cast their votes for the popular winner. (Even in those that do it is a question of how it could be enforced.) So we avoided what the system would have allowed, an Elector to vote for him or herself!

Thinking of the way our Constitutional system works, with all the historical provisions that were written in another era of our nation and its society, it is something to be very thankful for that wise minds have understood and applied the intentions of the framers even though we live today with technology and communications that in that era would have been considered miraculous, while we take it for granted. Sometimes events occur, such as this year’s election cycle, that allow us to reflect and appreciate that system and our ability as a society to continue to enjoy these enduring institutions.

Earl Baker was a three-term Chester County commissioner, a two-term Chester County senator and was also for four years the state GOP chairman.